SOCIAL SUPPORT AND CARDIOVASCULAR REACTIONS TO ACTIVE LABORATORY STRESSORS

In order to examine the hypothesis that social support attenuates card iovascular reactions to standard laboratory stressors, 60 male and 60 female undergraduates were first tested alone and then in one of three conditions: alone, or with a friend or a stranger present. Those test ed with a partner, be it friend or stranger, displayed cardiovascular reactions of a similar magnitude to those who remained alone. Subseque nt analysis following reallocation of subjects in the partnered condit ions to groupings based on their ratings of how supportive or prying t hey found their partners did yield some effects. However, they occurre d as interactive effects with sex, appeared on some cardiovascular ind ices but not others, and were modest in size, frequently failing to em erge as reliable on post hoc analysis. It was concluded that future te sts of the social support-reactivity hypothesis need to be conducted i n more realistic social settings.